Chicken Nugget Recall: 36,420 Pounds of Tyson Products May Contain Rubber
It's time to chuck your nugs.
by Emma BetuelWednesday was a sad day for nugs everywhere. Tyson Foods Inc., a giant in the world of bake-them-yourself chicken nuggets, was forced to recall over 36,000 pounds of chicken nuggets, citing concerns that they may have been contaminated with, of all things, “rubber products.”
According to the official release released by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), Tyson Inc. was alerted that their Panko White Meat chicken nuggets may contain “extraneous material” after receiving consumer reports that there was something extra in their chicken nuggets. All 36,420 contaminated nuggets, which were sent to retailers across the country were produced a single day: November 26th, 2018.
The FSIS recommends that anyone who bought the five-pound bags of Tyson Panko White Meat Chicken Nuggets should do the safe thing and trash their nuggets. There are three ways you can tell whether your nuggets might be contaminated: if the “best if used by” date reads November 26th 2019, if the bag has the case number 3308SDL03 on the label, or if the the establishment number is P-13556.
If your nuggets match the description given by FSIS, it's time to trash them.
Though there have been no reports of adverse events due to the contaminated nuggets yet, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t potential consequences to eating a nugget mixed with “extraneous material” — which is why the agency is urging people not to eat them. They also have yet to state exactly what the rubber products in the chicken nuggets are. In the release, they urge anyone with concerns to submit a question to their “virtual representative”, Karen, call their hotline, or live chat with a member of support staff.
This is shaping up to be a bad week for chicken nuggets in general. On Monday, FSIS anounced a recall on the 12-ounce bags of Purdue Foods LLC’s Fun Shapes Chicken Breast Nugget, which are shaped like dinosaurs. Fun! but not so fun is the fact that roughly 16,000 of those nuggets were recalled due to mislabeled packaging that failed to identify possible milk allergens.
You can tell if your own dino nuggets might be contaminated if your packages have a “best if used by” date of March 11th 2019 or contain the lot number 17009010 – 19009010. Those nuggets were shipped to locations in Connecticut, Delaware, Washington, DC, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia.
If your Tyson Panko White Meat Chicken Nuggets have these numbers on the packet, they could be contaminated with rubber. Throw them away.
Both nugget recalls taken together, this might be a good time to do a deep clean of your freezer. FSIS indicates that the agency is “concerned” that the rubbery nugs may be lurking in the depths of a freezer and urges anyone who might unknowingly be harboring rubber-laced nuggets to dispose of those nuggets in one fell swoop.
Disposing of contaminated nuggets is a good opportuity to do some tidying up anyway, both for bodily health and psychological well being. Rubbery nuggets definitely do not spark joy.
